


Benediction

by elistaire



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Angels, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elistaire/pseuds/elistaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos, Alexa, and an Angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benediction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/gifts).



The alley was shadowed and still, like a breath being held, and it smelled rancid, of rotting food and animal urine, and Methos found his footing slipping just as his opponent’s sword hilt crashed down on the crown of his head with enough force to dim out his sight for more than a moment. Methos went down to one knee on the slick ground.

He could hear his opponent approaching, and he prepared to push off the ground into a forward attack when _something_ dropped heavily, trembling the ground, crushing the air, behind him. Now his instincts were warning of danger behind and in front of him and Methos paused, indecisive. Whatever was behind him, it moved like thunder, rolling, rumbling, deep and yawning, wide as the sky, and its presence keened just at the edges of his awareness, like the honed edge of a blade singing through the air.

His opponent stopped and backed away, an expression of fear blooming. For twenty seconds, the sound of footfalls in the act of sprinting receded down the alley as Methos’ opponent turned and escaped, as if the hounds of hell nipped and snarled, demanding blood.

In his peripheral vision, Methos caught the flutter of something pristine, blindingly white, and ethereal. Feathers. Spread behind him at least six feet to each side, as if an enormous bird of prey had just swooped down.

But when he turned, there was just a frail woman, with bones as small as a sparrow’s, wearing a thin housedress. Her eyes, though, were a turmoil of chaos.

Methos cast a glance in the direction his opponent had run, and wished he’d been as fleet of foot. He took one step back, waiting, feeling the press of judgment as it pushed against his skin, against his flesh. His heart stuttered in his chest.

“There is one who has prayed for you,” the small woman said, her gaze aimed down the way that his adversary had run. Her voice was as light as spider silk on the wind, and as tenacious. “For protection, and for grace.”

Who, almost sprang to Methos’ lips, but between one heartbeat and the next, he knew. “Alexa,” he said out loud. The rarest soul he had ever met, and the loss of her was a dark stain inside his mind. He didn’t deserve even a mumbled word from her lips, and she had been praying for him. He felt humbled, and lost, and suddenly found.

The old woman-angel lifted her chin, not quite an acknowledgment, and bent over. Methos supposed she lifted into the air on the magnificent wings that he could not see, but a great wind filled the alley with her movement, and Methos was thrown to and fro, and dashed against the bricks.

For a long time after, he could only stare at the small strip of sky above the alley and ache, for the loss of Alexa, and for her abiding love.


End file.
